A professor of biochemistry at the University of Windsor, Siyaram Pandey, claims to have discovered pancracy sdaden, a compound from the spider lily, which could revolutionize the treatment of cancer.

By testing the spider lily compound on cells with 10 different cancers, Pandey found that it triggered a program of suicide in cancer cells without affecting healthy ones. Moreover, the compound has the advantage of not being toxic.
This is a major scientific breakthrough since the other cancer drugs available in Canada, Taxol and VP 16, are toxic and attack cancer cells as well as those that are not.

However, it takes a large amount of this plant to get a few milligrams of pancracy sdaden. In addition, the spider lily grows only in the Arizona desert and in Hawaii. Researchers will therefore have to synthesize the compound. Before an effective treatment can be marketed, animal experiments and clinical trials will have to be carried out, which will take several years.

sources:
http://www.radio-canada.ca/url.asp?/nouvelles/Santeeducation/nouvelles/200412/22/001-Lys-araignee-cancer.shtml
Editor: Elodie Pinot, OTTAWA, sciefran@ambafrance-ca.org